Lij Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and former editor of the Ghion Journal. He is currently the chair of Ethiopians for Constitutional Monarchy. A published author and prolific writer, a once defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going from...

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Hypocrites and the Pious in the District of Caligula

By Lij Teodrose Fikremariam on December 31, 2017

Our Republic was supposed to be a grand experiment where the people would be governed through consent and represented by men and women just like them. The experiment was launched during the Philadelphia Convention as the framers of the United States Constitution gathered in a hall and formulated the supreme law of the land. The Constitution’s purpose was to constraint the corrosive nature of authority and tame corruption by those entrusted with power. The experiment has imploded like the Hindenburg; we are now being ruled without consent and governed by the lawless.

I do not write this article for effect nor is what I present to you sensationalism for the sake of click-bait. The District of Caligula—as I now call our nation’s capital seeing how it has become a conclave of the depraved and the wanton—truly has become a gathering place of greed and graft. Our representative Democracy is nothing more than a smokescreen meant to hide the true hands of power who are ruling with ruthless cunning and malice. We are led by millionaires in Congress and the White House who serve at the pleasure of technocrats in Central Banks and billionaires in gated villas. They enact laws that indenture the mass majority of Americans into a life of bondage and debt while transferring trillions into the coffers of corporations and plutocrats. The whole of our nation has been turned into a pyramid scheme where they use our backs to build their empires—they call us “their base” for a reason. There to give cover to this diabolical scheme and legitimize the collusion between government and oligarchs are the Democratic and Republican parties. They use different means but in the end they both lead their supporters down the path of insolvency and dependency on federalized alms. We are governed by hypocrites and the pious. Both parties use identity politics and peddle grievances to their base in order to incite emotions and keep us in perpetual conflict. It’s tribalism and the playbook of colonization that they are using against us; what was perfected in foreign lands has been unleashed here in the United States. Our nation torn into separable camps, they convince us to “otherize” people who suffer just like us in order to prevent a united front.

Democrats are the hypocrites; they use paternalism and feigned concern for social justice as stepping stones to gain power and fortunes for themselves. They prey on “blacks”, minorities and women who have felt marginalized throughout history. Democrats are hope predators who peddle dreams to their loyalists and use their pains up to the moment they get elected. The minute the last ballot is counted, Democrats morph from crusaders for justice into lackeys of corporations. They arrive in DC and start passing laws and endorsing legislation that benefit their bloated benefactors while sucking their loyal supporters dry with monetary policies that is kneecapping the masses. They shake our hands until the first Tuesday of November and then give us their back hand as soon as they are sworn into office.

Republicans are the pious. They use family values and love of nation to camouflage their true malevolence. If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, when it comes to Republicans, religion is their first sanctuary. You know what Jesus would never do? He would never pass a tax cut for pharisees while telling the least among us to jump off a bridge. This is exactly what the Republicans did a few weeks ago; they authored a boondoggle that gives billions in tax cuts to the millionaire and billionaire class while saddling us and future generations with an onerous debt. After blowing up the deficit with this most pernicious tax scam, they will pivot in 2018 and don the costume of deficit hawks to go after social safety programs. They rob from the poor to give to the rich, if these are conservative Christians, then Pol Pot was the second coming of Moses.

The American dream is quickly becoming a land of uber riches for the wealthiest 1% and Uber drivers for the rest of us. This generation of college graduates, for the first time in America’s history, will be worse off than their parent’s generation. This is not by accident; corporatism has become a noose around our necks where each year the rope keeps getting tighter in order to asphyxiate our wealth and resources away from us and into the accounts of the neo-aristocracy who thrive as we suffer. Sadly, we are so distracted by individual grievances and our political differences that we don’t realize that we are all getting pillaged. Farmers in Kansas and the children of coal miners in the Appalachians are getting railroaded by the same system of capital theft which is bludgeoning the masses in the inner cities from Chicago to Harlem. The only chance we have to overcome this level of institutional theft and the kleptocracy that is bleeding us in DC and Wall Street is by putting aside identity, ideologies and dogmas and coming together as one.

It is high time that we stop feeding into this duopoly and reclaim our government from the hands of the equally malignant Democrats and Republicans. Voting for the same parties over and over again and expecting a different outcome is the height of insanity. How much longer are we going to keep falling for the hoodwink before we realize that change will not come from the ballot box that is limited to two false choices? We are on the cusp of a New Year; let us resolve to finding a new way forward and refuse to partake in this shell game that the hypocrite Democrats and the pious Republicans have perfected. Instead of being instigated to fight one another, splintered along meaningless labels and shattered by individual grievances, let us unite to stand for the change we all want. #HypocritesAndThePious

“There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.” ~ Frederick William Robertson

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Lij Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and former editor of the Ghion Journal. He is currently the chair of Ethiopians for Constitutional Monarchy. A published author and prolific writer, a once defense consultant was profoundly changed by a two year journey of hardship and struggle. Going from a life of upper-middle class privilege to a time spent with the huddled masses taught Teodrose a valuable lesson in the essence of togetherness and the need to speak against injustice.

Originally from Ethiopia with roots to Atse Tewodros II, Lij Teodrose is a former community organizer whose writing was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina primary victory speech in 2008. He pivoted away from politics and decided to stand for collective justice after experiencing the reality of the forgotten masses. His writing defies conventional wisdom and challenges readers to look outside the constraints of labels and ideologies that serve to splinter the people. Lij Teodrose uses his pen to give a voice to the voiceless and to speak truth to power.